The rose garden
by SILENTSANCTUARY
Summary: In-depth story of the time-period before Sora's arrival in Castle Oblivion. NaminexMarluxia fandom.
1. FIRST ENCOUNTERS

"Superior, I bring you a girl that you might find interest in."

"I see. And what powers could she possibly possess that would capture my attention?"

"She has the power to manipulate Sora's memories and those around or close to him."

A murmur of assent ripples throughout the room. She takes a daring chance and flits her sapphire eyes upwards. She catches the Superior's yellow-gold eyes gleaming with savage triumph before she averts her glance.

"I see. How _interesting _indeed. What is her name XI?"

The rose-haired nobody hesitates. He looks at her pale form, her hands joining to form a perfect V at her waist. He turns his attention back to Xemnas, responding in a curt voice.

"I haven't named her yet, Superior."

"Well, then..."

The Superior descends from his chair mounted high into the ceiling, the mantle of his black coat gliding across the floor as he walked across the room. He stops where she is, bending down so that he can tip her chin upwards. Her eyes are unafraid to meet his this time.

"What beautiful blue eyes," he breathed, scrutinizing her. "Her name shall be Namine. And her care XI, shall be entrusted to you. Be sure that she is treated well. We may need her in the future."

Marluxia bows his head, a shock of pale-pink hair escaping from his black hood. "I understand Superior."

The silver-haired rises to his full height, addressing to the rest of the black cloaked members of the Organzation. An aura of authority seems to emanate from him.

"All the rest, depart."

One by one, the cloaked figures stand up from their seats and disappear into a swirling black vortex that opens up to swallow them. The Superior flicks his wrist upward and a portal appears before him. Before he steps into it, he looks back towards Marluxia.

"With the care of Namine, I also leave this castle in your disposal. You are in charge of everyone here. If you should ever need of assistance, there is Larxene, Axel, Zexion, Lexaeus and Vexen at your service. Good day."

He disappears within the portal. Namine eyes the spot where he had been moments before.

Marluxia turns towards her. He extends a gloved hand.

"Let me escort you to your room. It's quite spacious. You'll get used to it. You might even like it."

She appraises the proffered hand with wariness. She doesn't bother to accept it thinking that accepting a helping hand from this Marluxia is like reaching your hand into a sack filled with poisonous snakes.

"And what happens if I _don't_ like the room?"

Silence. She thinks that she has crossed some forbidden territory between them because Marluxia drops his hand and glares at her. It's the first time that she sees his hard blue eyes for what they really are. Nothingness, like the bottom of an empty can. They are the type of eyes that send chills down your back when you see right through them. Marluxia may smile, may arrange his face in an emotion that suggested solicituous empathy but his eyes would never reflect his facial expressions. They are just two smoldering crystals bored into his face.

The silence breaks with Marluxia's chuckle. He tries to pass off her remark as a joke, but she sees that the effort is putting a great strain on him. She looks cooly at him as his chuckles fade to sighs. He puts a hand behind her back and runs it down the soft frabic of her dress. She shudders and squirms away from his touch. Thankfully, he pulls back his hand and sweeps his pale pink bangs to the side with his fingers.

"Well you don't have much choice. Do you?" He smiles a perfect smile, displaying white teeth the size of fish scales. "Where else would you go?"


	2. THE SKY WITH BIRDS

She spent the first few days, getting used to her new room -- her new home. Although she did nothing more than sit by the window, looking at the empty fields that surrounded Castle Oblivion, unresponsive and fickle, Marluxia stopped by once in a while to check up on her. He stayed there in her room for what seem like _hours, _making small conversation even though her answers were nothing more than a word or two.

Over time, she forgets to treat Marluxia with the usual stiffness and suspicion she showed towards him in the beginning. Little by little, she falls under his manipulative spell until she is no more than his slave.

A part of her tells her that she is a fool for believing his enchanting words -- the words of a devil, but she disregards reason and logic all together. In Castle Oblivion, Marluxia is the only friend she has. Or at least she thought he was.

One day during another of Marluxia's visits, he brought something with him. "A present," he says with a grin, "For Namine."

He hands her a sketchbook, a box of crayons. She stares at the puzzling gift with curious eyes. She looks back at Marluxia, hoping that he tell her its uses.

"It's something that you can use to pass the time," he explains, gently taking the box of crayons. He spills the brightly colored crayons onto her lap, taking a blue one into his fingers. "See? You make drawings with these." He opens the sketchbook to the first blank page and crudely scribbles on it with the blue crayon to demonstrate its use.

Color blooms on the once blank piece of paper, drawing her attention. She has never seen such bright and vivacious colors before, so she hovers over the sketchook as if it was a holy object. Marluxia presses the blue color pencil into her fingers and guides it towards the paper.

"Draw me a sky. With birds," he says in a playful tone. He sits down next to her and puts his head on his lap.

Suddenly, she remembers how he touched her during their first encounter and she briefly shudders. She shifts queasily in her seat. Thankfully, Marluxia notices her discomfort and dislodges his head from her lap. She breathes a hidden sigh of relief. The crayon slips a little in her fingers.

She looks at the open page as if it was challenge. A sky, a sky. What did a sky look like? She looked outside the window. There was no sky. In the World that Never Was, the sky was permanently inked black with no clouds, no birds, no light. So why did Marluxia hand her the blue crayon?

She scans her eye through the other crayons for the color she wanted. Her eye finds the black crayon and she drops the blue one for it. Marluxia makes a clucking sound in his throat and presses the blue crayon back into her hand.

"The sky is blue. Don't you know that?"

She shakes her head. He sighs impatiently and stands up to leave. She looks helplessly at the sketchbook and the assorted number of crayons on her lap. A pit of shame erupts inside of her, shame that she has disappointed Marluxia.

"When you can draw a blue sky, I'll come back," he says. His voice is gentle as it has always been but she hints a bit of coldness in it. "It's not that hard. Just look in your memories."

He walks out of the room, leaving her to contemplate her new dilemma by herself. She looks at the sketchbook in her arms. It looks back at her but this time, it does not look back with comfort.


	3. THE MEMORY OF THE SKY

_Look into your memories. _

She closed her eyes against the pale white light of her room and let her subconscious guide her towards the memories she sought for.

She remembered now.

It wasn't a memory of her own, but it was a memory of someone else's. A boy with sandy-brown hair.

In the memory, he ran ahead of her, laughing as he recklessly jumped over rocks and pieces of driftwood that stuck themselves into the sand. She was running too, falling a little behind the boy. She heard herself laugh, a laugh that contained exhilaration and happiness that were not her own.

A silver-haired boy ran beside the sandy-haired. He was a little ahead of his companion, but she could tell that he was straining to catch up. The two raced each other to the other end of the beach where a little flag that was planted into a mound of sand. The silver-haired reached there first with ease, leaving his challenger wheezing as he came in second.

"Awww, you won again, Riku!" the sandy-haired boy groaned as he collasped on the ground in mock defeat. "You always win. Can't you let me win for once?"

"I did once, remember? Hey, at least you're faster than Kairi. Cheer up, you lazy bum." The boy named Riku ruffled his companion's already messy hair before he looked towards her direction. "Hey here she comes."

The sandy-haired turned his head in her direction as well. She caught the sight of his face -- sun-bleached from many days spent on this island, but still a friendly looking face. His hair stuck up on its end from being ruffled. Seeming to notice her looking back at him, he hastily tried to flatten the bird-nest of his hair, but failing to do so. A boyish flush flooded his cheeks. His blue eyes seemed to show an unrestrained happiness as he waved at her.

"Hey Kairi! The last one as usual huh?"

_Kairi?_

_Who was this Kairi?_

She looked down. Her shoes and clothes were different from what she remembered wearing. She fingered her hair and discovered that it was a cherry red -- so unlike her white-blond hair that she kept neatly tucked over her shoulder.

_She was Kairi?_

Despite her hesitance, she ran towards this boy, arms akimbo to the air. She felt her head tilt towards the sky above her as she ran. In that brief glance, she saw fluffy white clouds streaming across the blue expanse of the sky -- seagulls soaring in the breeze that lifted their wings.

She reached the two other boys waiting for her, almost collapsing into the sandy brown haired when she tripped over the mount of sand. Her mouth was already forming his name, even though she did not know it.

"Sora!"

----------------------------------

She woke up, spread-eagled on the floor. She had fallen off her seat near the window sometime during her sleep, but wasn't aware of it until she felt a small bump on the side of her head where it hurt. Her sketchbook was still on her lap, its cover open to the page in which Marluxia scribbled at. Her crayons, however, had fallen off her lap and rolled across the floor in different directions.

She sat up groggily, looking for the blue crayon that had been in her fingers moments before. As she searched the floor for the stray crayon, she picked up the others and placed them in their correct order in the box. The blue crayon was no where to be found while the others had been safely returned to the box. She slumped onto the floor in dismay.

Suddenly, she glimpsed the crayon, which had rolled under a cabinet. Her fingers groped for it in the small crack until they finally closed upon it. When she pulled it out from its hiding place, she saw that part of the waxy paper covering of the crayon had peeled and the tip was a bit chipped. How it got there in the first place, she wasn't sure.

Returning back to her little corner by the window, she tucked in her legs and began drawing the memory she dreamed of while she was asleep. For some strange reason, she was able to recall every detail in the memory on paper.

When she finished, she compared the drawing of the sky in her memories to the sky outside her window. What a difference! She wished her sky was as picturesque as the one in her drawings.


	4. THE ROSE GARDEN

The many floors and rooms of Castle Oblivion had her confused and although in the beginning she had anticipated the excitement of exploring the castle and hopefully running into Marluxia, now she felt lost and upset -- without a slightest inkling of where she was and how to get back to her room. She hugged her notebook close to her chest, walking tentatively down the hallway. Castle Oblivion housed strange rooms -- rooms seem to lead to different worlds, different environments. Some rooms were locked and forbidden to enter without a key or permission of an elder member and some rooms were empty, seeming to serve no purpose of all, but all of them held some kind of mystique that was instilled within this castle. She never lingered in one room more than a few seconds, but it was enough for her to catch sight of strange wonders, mysterious worlds that the rooms contained.

She wandered into one of these rooms, for the door was ajar and an eerie light seemed to emanate from within. Maybe someone lives here, she thought as she stepped into the room. Evidence of someone's existence was scattered everywhere from papers with a scrawl of words written upon neat orderly lines to the many vials and jars lined up in a row. Was this some kind of scientific laboratory?

"H-hello?" she called out. The sound of her voice echoed in the dimly lit room. She heard a shuffle of motion near one of the tables before a cloaked figure stepped out from the shadows, appraising her with a cold look. Almost immediately, she bowed her head, the air in which the character emitting seeming to be very superior.

"What are you doing here in my room?" he said suspiciously, his green eyes piercing through the spectacles he wore. "This is a forbidden area, reserved only for the elder members of the Organization."

"I'm -- I'm sorry," she stammered, taking a few steps back, "I d-didn't know. I was just looking for Marluxia."

He stared at her for a good five seconds before he gave a sigh and turned his back against her. She heard him mumble a few indistinct words as he dropped the stack of papers he was holding on the desk and extinguished the fire that kept a small pot of indiscernible liquids boiling. "Alright then," he said, turning back to face her, "I suppose I can take time out of my busy schedule to escort you to Marluxia. Come along."

He motioned with his hand for her to follow him. With his other hand, he opened a portal that appeared to accommodate them. Taking her firmly on the wrist, he walked straight into the swirling vortex dragging her along.

- - - - - - -

They appeared in front of a large door, a door that was almost as big as the entrance door, but not as tall. The stranger who had helped her rapped his knuckles on the door's surface, calling out to the person within the room.

"Marluxia, it is IV. I believe I have someone with me that would like to see you."

The door swung open following a few seconds later, revealing a lush garden. She covered her eyes against the sudden stream of light that illuminated the room. The light here was almost blinding -- the type of light she wasn't used to after spending so many days in her dimly lit room.

"Ah, Vexen, I see you have Namine with you." Marluxia voice floated above her. "Thank you for escorting her. You may leave now."

The man, Vexen, made a sound in his throat that suggested arrogance. "You shall address me as IV, XI. Only Superior can address me with my given name. You, a lower member shall not use such terms to address me. I am an elder member, after all."

She rubbed her eyes, finally being able to discern her surroundings amid the bright light. Marluxia seemed to hold the same cordial behavior but his tone seemed to be much colder, more enforced.

"You forget, that Superior has made me in charge of this castle." He seemed to stand a bit taller as he said this. "I shall address you as I wish. Again, I thank you for escorting Namine. I bid you to leave."

Vexen seemed to be ruffled by Marluxia's response, his hand already motioning for a portal to be opened. "Power has given you confidence to insult me, I see. You will see that Superior will soon turn the tables and exchange responsibility of the castle to _me_. Then _you_ would be the one to talk of superiority. Good day." He disappeared within the portal."

Marluxia stood there for a few seconds, eyeing the spot where Vexen had disappeared before he turned his attention towards her. "Ah, Namine, what is your reason for seeing me? Have you finished the drawing that I asked you to complete?"

She nodded, a slight blush coloring her pale cheeks. She handed her sketchbook to him. "It's not that good -- the drawing I mean," she said nervously, looking shyly at her hands, "It's my first time and the coloring is a little --"

"It's perfect," he interrupted, giving her back the sketchbook with the page opened her her first drawing. "Just as what I expected. You have a great talent, Namine." He smiled a perfect smile, the corners of his lips spread out in an even curve.

She blushed once more, her eyes riveted to the ground. "Thank you," she made sure to say. She was elated at his praise -- his approval.

"Come here," he said, taking her hand. "And close your eyes."

- - - - - -

He made sure that her foot did not trip over anything as his hand directed her to their destination. Along the way, she felt her feet passing over from a gritty terrain to a more softer ground. The soil here is soft and slightly wet.

He stopped suddenly, making her bump into him. He dropped her hand. "You can look now."

She opened her eyes and gasped in wonder at the scene that greets her upon opening her eyes. Taking up the center of the garden is a rose tree, one about the size of a fully grown maple. Its branches extends upward to the sky, blocking out sunlight and providing shade to the surrounding area. The roses blooming upon the branches are a dusty shade of red. Each one is so perfectly formed that it seemed almost impossible that nature alone could have nurtured them. Among all the blooming blossoms, there is no flaw, no imperfection.

Surrounding the rose tree are smaller rose trees or rose bushes. They gather around the centerfold, the masterpiece as if they are children -- forever tending to their mother. Vines, protected by an army of thorns dripping in a poisonous exertion, entwine themselves around the trunk of the rose tree. They too bloom similar roses, only they have not matured, still stuck in the phase of budding, their petals firm and too hard to be considered as soft as velvet.

"It's...beautiful..." she breathed, taking small steps around the rose tree that had captured her attention. Her hands suddenly itched for a pencil, a free page in her sketchbook. How could she not capture this enrapturing scene on paper?

"Careful," Marluxia warned her, following from behind. She felt his body brush past hers, his rough fingers taking the hand she kept at her side. "The roses have thorns. They'll prick your pretty fingers."

- - - - - - - - -

They stayed in the rose garden for a long time, enjoying the ambiance and comfort it provided. While Marluxia returned to his gardening, she sat on the soft grass and started drawing. With her crayons, she drew an image of the rose tree -- its branches depicted like individual arms reaching towards the sky.

Occasionally, while the two sat there -- absorbed in their own different words, Marluxia would make small conversation, as he weeded a patch of newly planted roses. Although drawing took most of her attention, she realized that she enjoyed hearing the sound of his voice even though her responses were usually short and one-worded. Marluxia did nothing to protest her lack of speech. Instead, he remained calm and patient, like an adult talking to a mute child.

He explained to her that the garden was his sanctuary, the place he escaped to after meetings and stressful days of work. Although he toiled among plants that did nothing to acknowledge his existence, he enjoyed watching them grow from tiny seedlings to a fully grown beauties. "It's like raising children," he said proudly, "except without all the whining and the screaming, and perfection is the only result in the end."

"But what happens to those flowers that ends up ugly or messed up?" she inquired, brushing off stray eraser marks from her new drawing.

He paused, the flat end of his shovel just piercing through the soft dirt. Even in the shade of the rose tree, his eyes seem to change colors from a cobalt blue to a pitch black. And just as quickly as his mood changed, he switched back to his normal self. He wore a smile thinly on his lips and beckoned her to his side.

"You know, the Organization is a lot like the gardeners that takes care of their plants," he said as she listened, "If there is any imperfection -- something that endangers the other plants, they uproot it. Like this."

He carefully parted the branches of a nearby rose tree to reveal a single dandelion nestled near its roots. Its existence seemed like extraordinary feat, for Marluxia usually kept the area free of weeds and grass so that his roses could flourish without being deprived of the nutrition that they needed. Prying his fingers under the weed, he pulled it out, roots and all with a quick, fluid motion.

He showed it to her. "The Organization protects existences like ours. We are _special_ existences, born from the hearts of others. That is why we must stick together, you and I. The Organization is always thinking of the greater good for our kind."

He discarded the lonely dandelion in a plastic bag he kept next to him and brushed his gloved hands of its lingering remains. "Whatever stands in the way of obtaining the greater good, like this _weed,_ we must eradicate. And the reward in the end, in exchange for all our effort and work?" He smiled and swept a hand across the vicinity of the place. "Only perfection, my dear Namine. Perfection."

She shivered inwardly at the word. _Perfection._ Somehow, the word sounded sinister, a sign of something that was being hidden from her. She looked at the newly completed drawing in her hands. The rose tree was something that was perfect. Spring, summer, autumn and winter may pass, but Marluxia would keep the rose tree alive and blooming. The roses sitting upon its branches would never wilt, never grow dark patches upon its petals. They would go through constant, unchanging cycles of seasons, remaining perfect as it was the day before. Time didn't effect them and could no longer touch them as long as Marluxia tended to them.


	5. ANOTHER DREAM

Another memory.

The island is breaking apart. The land of their childhood dreams is disintegrating. Chunks of rock and dirt fall off from the main body, dropping into the ocean's waiting grasp. She is at the beach, unable to do anything but watch this nightmare unfold. Hands clasped near her chest, she looks up at the sky, hoping that by some miracle, this was all a dream and Sora would wake her up as he usual when she dozed off on the beach.

The sky churns black and clouds rolls past, bringing winds along with their journey. These ferocious winds, rip the paopu trees from the ground and carries stray debris into the air, only to have them falling back down. She screams as a tree trunk collapses where she was just standing before. Her hair whips her across her face. Chaos. Total chaos.

The tide is rising and the ocean is starting to swallow the beach. Realizing that the water was just at her feet, she steps back and starts to run, hoping to outrun the rising tide. She trips over her feet in the scramble. Her hands frantically reach for an object to hold, someone to tell her this is all a dream, that it was just an illusion.

Her hand grasps someone's arm. In the disaster, in the chaos, a hand keeps her steady, keeps her from falling. She spun wildly, searching for the stranger's face. It is Sora. Finally, she lets herself burst into tears. Sora who always felt uncomfortable and awkward when she cried, fiercely wrapped her in his embrace, letting her bury her heavy head into his hair.

A crack, a sound of rock breaking, startles her. The ground in which they are standing on splits into two. She cries out as the piece that is carrying her starts to drift away from Sora. Slowly, their embrace is wrenched apart by the two fragments of the rock carrying each of them, drifting apart. She makes her mind to jump the gap between them, to land on Sora's side of the rock, but Sora shouts and tells her that it is too dangerous. She shakes her head. "I can do it," she says over the sound of crumbling rock, "I can do it!"

But Sora shakes his head. Using his remaining strength, he pushes her back, just as their fingers left each other.

"Kairi!" Sora yells, what seems like miles away, "I'll come back to you! I promise!"

On the other side, she drops to the ground and weeps and calls out his name over and over again, but Sora is gone and she is left alone on the island, left to what would be the beginning of her long wait for him.

This wasn't a dream. This was reality.

- - - - - -

But what was a dream turned out to be a dream _within_ a dream for _her._

She groggily pulled herself awake, tired of the constant stream of memories -- another's memories, pulling her to sleep. This would happen at any given time or moment. Once another of this _Sora's_ memories caught hold of her, everything turned black and the memory would start to play itself like some kind of fragmented movie that was set to play its clips individually at some unknown moment. For as long as the memory unfolded itself, she would remain unconscious, unaware of reality.

Now, the memories came at a faster and more relentless pace. They came everyday now and they often drove her to draw them out in her sketchbook. After a memory had unfolded itself and she woke up, her fingers itched for her crayons and a free piece of paper. She could never betray this wanting, this _feeling._ Drawing became a vital part of her stay in Castle Oblivion. It was a insatiable drug. The more she resisted it, the stronger its need became. So she learned not to resist her need to draw. She actually became to enjoy it. Like how the rose garden was to Marluxia, she found that drawing was her passion.

Subconsciously, she reached for her sketchbook which was always not too far from her side and her pack of crayons. She began to sketch out the most recent memory, a little hurried in case another one decided that it was a right time to present itself. In a few short minutes, she had the drawing completed.

Another memory of a strange boy, she thought as she closed the sketchbook, waiting for another of Marluxia's visits. When would the day come when she would actually meet him instead of seeing him in his memories?


	6. TOMODACHI

Namine,  
I will be gone for a few days.  
I promise to visit you once I come back.  
- Marluxia

The note that he had left on her table was new. _He must have came here when I was asleep, _she thought as folded the paper back to how she found it. She dropped it on the table and sighed morosely, pondering the open possibilities of entertainment she could amuse herself with today.

She ripped out a piece of paper from her sketchbook and started a list of things to do for today. She picked at her pencil's eraser as she thought of ideas, but when she finally finished her list, it was very short.  
  
Things to do   
Draw?  
Explore the castle?  
Visit Vexen's laboratory?  
Visit Marluxia's garden?

She wasn't really in the drawing mood today. There wasn't any new Sora memories that she could depict and her surroundings were bleak -- too dull to be captured on paper. She crossed that out of her list. Maybe once another memory presented itself, but not at the moment.

Exploring the castle like last time seemed like a very tempting activity to do -- especially since the castle was so vast and mysterious, but she blotted out that option as well. Marluxia was gone and if she got herself lost this time, she probably wouldn't be as lucky as last time when Vexen assisted her. _Another time,_ she consoled her disappointed self.

After much consideration, she decided not to visit Vexen's laboratory. The reason why she wrote that down in the first place was because she was curious of what the scientist's motive was with all those strange chemicals and objects he had in the room. She also reasoned with herself that Vexen would probably be annoyed with her presence. She had a feeling that Vexen enjoyed his privacy and did not socialize well with lower members of the Organization or people he hardly knew.

That only left the possibility of visiting Marluxia's garden on the list. She crossed that out a few seconds later. Marluxia's garden was taboo if Marluxia did not give the unknown visitor permission in the first place. _It's probably locked anyways,_ her logic told her, _What makes you think that Marluxia wouldn't lock it when he's away?  
_  
She tucked her legs into her body, eyes riveted to the clock. There was nothing to do but wait for Marluxia's return. Without him, there was nothing to do and time seemed to pass by very slowly.

- - - - - - - - - - -

A few days later, while aimlessly scribbling at her sketchbook, [another memory of Sora had found its way to an open page] the door creaked open. Her head shot up at the first noise she had heard besides her own. To her excitement, Marluxia's head popped into her room. Apparently he had tried to open the door quietly to surprise her but failed. She dropped her sketchbook on the table as she crossed the room. She didn't bother to disguise the smile she had on her face. Marluxia was back.

"Oh, you caught me," he said in good humor, giving a small 'oof' as she leapt up to hug him. "I can tell you missed me." That same devious smile he always wore appeared on his lips.

"Yes, yes, I did," she replied, stepping back to allow his body to slide into her room. He was hiding something behind his back. Like a child, she tried to peer at the sight behind him but Marluxia held her back with one hand. He chuckled.

"There, now, don't get all excited." He motioned for her to stay still. Fashioning a blindfold from his pocket, he threw it at her. "Tie this over your eyes. I want this to be a surprise," he informed her.

She did what she was told. He gently pushed her down on a chair and crouched next to her.

"Are you ready?"

"Yes."

"Okay then." She could sense coyness in his voice. "Open your eyes."

She ripped her blindfold off her and excitedly turned her attention to the gift Marluxia had in his hands. She let out a small gasp of wonder and elation. Sitting on his lap was an elaborate metal cage, its design probably made by a skilled craftsman and artisan. Inside the cage, a sleeping bird sat on a small wooden beam attached to the inside of the cage, its head tucked into its wing. It was a darling thing, a small bright songbird with feathers of gold. It was like a bright ray of sunshine in her colorless room.

"Do you like it?"

She nodded in vigor and gave a small laugh of delight as Marluxia attached it to a hook on a standing pole he had also obtained. The songbird stirred from its sleep and immediately started chirping in indignation at Marluxia's clumsiness in securing the cage to the hook.

"Marluxia, does it have a name?" she asked, tiptoeing to poke her finger between the metal wires. The songbird inspected it warily before hopping to the other side of the cage.

"I don't know," he said, gazing at the present he had procured for her. "I was thinking you could come up with one."

She thought, pulling her finger away from the cage. "I don't know," she said truthfully. She picked at her fingernails before she came up with an appropriate namesake. "Tomadachi," she proudly said, "Its name will be Tomodachi. Or Tomo-chan for short. What do you think?"

He nodded in assent. "Whatever suits your liking. But now when I am gone, you'll always have a friend to keep you company." He placed a hand on her shoulder. "So you won't be lonely."

* SIDENOTE: Tomodachi is Japanese for "good friend_"_


End file.
